The present invention relates to an improvement enabling better cleaning of the inner door glass pane of a food cooking oven, in particular, an oven for professional kitchens and similar catering applications, as well as for enhancing moisture removal from said inner door glass pane.
It is widely known that in food cooking ovens that use steam as a cooking medium, the whole cooking cavity is filled with such steam. If a sufficiently low temperature prevails in the cooking cavity, the steam condenses on the food, on the interior walls of the cavity and, in particular, on the inner face of the front glazing of the door, which are therefore wetted copiously.
When the oven door is closed, steam condensate collects on the bottom of the cooking cavity, where appropriate conduits are provided to convey it outside the cooking cavity. When the door is then opened, the water formed by condensation inside the door starts dripping on the floor in an uncontrolled way. This, as it may easily be appreciated, not only constitutes a hygiene problem, but also represents a risky situation, since a wet floor becomes slippery and, therefore, dangerous for personnel working nearby.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,641,630, for example, shows an arrangement having, along the lower edge of the door, a channel which extends along the width of the same door. Near the lower hinge thereof, an outlet opening is provided onto a condensate collecting gutter, said gutter being arranged externally of the door, along the lower edge thereof.
Therefore, condensation water dripping off the opened door is collected by such a gutter and conveyed to the drain through such an opening, so that no water leakage takes place in the area where the oven is installed. In order to keep such a water collecting arrangement as compact as possible dimensionally, the outlet opening is aligned with the axis of the pivot of the door.
Such an arrangement, albeit quite effective and simple, has however a main drawback. The outlet opening between said gutter and the underlying collecting channel situated beneath the lower edge of the oven cavity opening has the drawback of becoming quite easily obstructed either by solid or fat cooking residues and debris which are flushed off the door glazings and carried away by condensate water during each cooking operation or by food particles that may accidentally fall into such a gutter.
In order to avert the occurrence of such a drawback, it would of course be possible to provide a larger outlet opening, but this would be clearly in contrast with the need of keeping the thickness of the gutter as narrow as possible.
It is furthermore a common experience of all oven operators and users that fumes and vapors generated during food cooking operations tend to seep into the hollow space existing between the outer glass pane and the inner glass pane of the door, thereby depositing tiny particles of solid residues and debris there, which will eventually heavily soil the opposing glazings. This gives rise to two distinct types of problems. First of all, this occurrence creates a hindrance tending to prevent an outside observer from adequately looking through at the food being cooked inside the oven cavity, thereby making the provision of a double door glazing, ie. a viewing window, useless. The second and far more serious problem derives from the fact that the same presence of such food debris in the hollow space between the door glazings will eventually trigger putrefaction and fermentation processes, with clearly perceivable, obvious consequences on the hygienic conditions and safety in the use of the oven itself.
For this particular portion of the oven to be kept clean in a systematic and effective way, it therefore would be necessary that a portion of the door be systematically disassembled so as to enable someone to reach and clean the outward facing surface of the inner door glazing, as well as the inward facing surface of the outer door glazing. However, this operation would prove time-consuming and require a quite careful handling on the part of the kitchen worker that normally is fully devoted to other, more important tasks. Furthermore, the worker may not be the most qualified to carry out mechanical disassembly operations, however simple they might be.